Detropia is everything you think it’s going to be: educational, emotional and highly depressing. Yet, Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing’s documentary portrait of Detroit, America’s noted city of industry, is not a static picture of decay.

Engaging the driveshaft of change and the redeeming human trait of adaptation, this artistic and somewhat unconventional film forces the viewer to become an imaginary citizen of the Motor City as it faces its greatest challenge in more than 100 years of history.

Once the fastest growing urban centre in the world, Detroit now faces an unemployment rate of more than 50 per cent. The municipal coffers are completely empty, forcing city councillors to cut back on every essential service, from schools to bus service.

At one point, they even propose a mass relocation to consolidate the city into something half its current size because the abandoned buildings have become a safety hazard.

Such desperate measures are an indication of just how desperate the times have become for residents of the Michigan metropolis, but as this movie makes abundantly clear, Detroit is probably just the tip of a growing iceberg.

The collapse of America’s manufacturing sector has led to the demise of the once-mighty middle class, forcing a backward slide in the overall standard of living and full rewrite of the American dream.

We can’t help but watch as houses are torn down daily and residents turn to scavenging scrap metal in order to eat.

The point is definitely political, but Ewing and Grady never insert themselves — or their cameras — into the eddy of rhetoric to support a particular point of view.

The film glides along in almost surreal fashion, touching down in community halls, abandoned skyscrapers, near-empty suburban neighbourhoods and sketchy city streets. The whole thing looks post-apocalyptic — which is why Detropia proves so riveting: This is a huge American city on the verge of dying, and watching it crumble apart brick-by-brick is akin to watching Armageddon unfold in slow motion.

We can’t help but watch as houses are torn down daily and residents turn to scavenging scrap metal in order to eat.

At one point, we watch a group of young men arrive at an abandoned warehouse in the middle of the night, attach chains to the steel structure, and attempt to pull it down with a pickup truck.

“Where does the steel go?” someone asks. “Probably to China, where they can melt it down and make something they will sell back to us for more money … ” responds another.

In just a few strokes, Ewing and Grady isolate the big picture problem of cheap offshore manufacturing and its effect on the home front.

Talking heads give us more context on the economic factors, but the beauty of this movie is the way it integrates these fact-based conversations with deep emotion.

Whether it’s watching a union meeting or sitting down with the city’s mayor for a one-on-one, the filmmakers never lose sight of the fact these are real people facing a real crisis.

They aren’t just statistics or talking points at a G20 conference: they are human beings desperately seeking a way to maintain their dignity in a world that once looked a lot like our own.

The shooting style is a central part of their artistic success because the cameras never feel intrusive. They feel like an intelligent presence that says nothing, but sees everything.

For instance, there is no omniscient voice-over shaping our understanding of the facts. Even when the filmmakers end up in a news environment, where other cameras are shooting close-ups of people making public statements, Grady and Ewing stand back to witness the whole circus.

One sequence featuring a meeting between city staff and an outside consulting firm gives us all the expository information we need, as well as the grim facial expressions of those listening.

These tiny details are a crucial victory because they allow the film to sidestep the divisive elements drenched in rhetorical gasoline and let the viewer make up his or her mind about what’s happening with the economy, and the continuing shifts in the fabric of American culture.

A carefully crafted cautionary tale, Detropia is a dirge for the America that was, as well as a brassy round of reveille for what America could be.